Early in the morning let us take a stroll into the market, and see how things are managed there. Round the inside of a high-walled enclosure is a row of the rudest of booths. Over portions of the pathway, stretching across to other booths in the centre—if the market is a wide one—are pieces of cloth, vines on trellis, or canes interwoven with brushwood. As the sun gains strength these afford[page 108] a most grateful shade, and during the heat of the day there is no more pleasant place for a stroll, and none more full of characteristic life. In the wider parts, on the ground, lie heaps two or three feet high of mint, verbena and lemon thyme, the much-esteemed flavourings for the national drink—green-tea syrup—exhaling a most delicious fragrance. It is early summer: the luscious oranges are not yet over, and in tempting piles they lie upon the stalls made of old packing-cases, many with still legible familiar English and French inscriptions. Apricots are selling at a halfpenny or less the pound, and plums and damsons, not to speak of greengages, keep good pace with them in price and sales. The bright tints of the lettuces and other fresh green vegetables serve to set off the rich colours of the God-made delicacies, but the prevailing hue of the scene is a restful earth-brown, an autumnal leaf-tint; the trodden ground, the sun-dried brush-wood of the booths and awnings, and the wet-stained wood-work. No glamour of paint or gleam of glass destroys the harmony of the surroundings.
But with all the feeling of cool and repose, rest there is not, or idleness, for there is not a brisker scene in an oriental town than its market-place. Thronging those narrow pathways come the rich and poor—the portly merchant in his morning cloak, a spotless white wool jelláb, with a turban and girth which bespeak easy circumstances; the labourer in just such a cloak with the hood up, but one which was always brown, and is now much mended; the slave in shirt and drawers, with a string round his shaven pate; the keen little Jew[page 109] boy pushing and bargaining as no other could; the bearded son of Israel, with piercing eyes, and his daughter with streaming hair; lastly, the widow or time-worn wife of the poor Mohammedan, who must needs market for herself. Her wrinkled face and care-worn look tell a different tale from the pompous self-content of the merchant by her side, who drives as hard a bargain as she does. In his hand he carries a palmetto-leaf basket, already half full, as with slippered feet he carefully picks his way among puddles and garbage.
"Good morning, O my master; God bless thee!" exclaims the stall-keeper as his customer comes in sight.
Sáïd el Faráji has to buy cloth of the merchant time and time again, so makes a point of pleasing one who can return a kindness.
"No ill, praise God; and thyself, O Sáïd?" comes the cheery reply; then, after five minutes' mutual inquiry after one another's household, horses and other interests, health and general welfare, friend Sáïd points out the daintiest articles on his stall, and in the most persuasive of tones names his "lowest price."
All the while he is sitting cross-legged on an old box, with his scales before him.
"What? Now, come, I'll give you so much," says the merchant, naming a price slightly less than that asked.
"Make it so much," exclaims Sáïd, even more persuasively than before, as he "splits the difference."
"Well, I'll give you so much," offering just a little less than this sum. "I can't go above that, you know."